Judith Weir, Blond Eckbert

Judith Weir's Miss Fortune starts tonight at the Royal Opera House. She's written many operas in the past, because she's a natural story teller. One of my favourites is Blond Eckbert (1993) which premiered at the ENO and was last staged in London at the Linbury Theatre, ROH in 2006  It was staged by John Fulljames, now Kaspar Holten's associate at the Royal Opera House, with the innovative company The Opera Group, without whom much modern British opera would be undervalued.  This is what I wrote at the time:

"The dark, wild forests of Germany were powerfully symbolic in folklore. Hidden in the forest, strange, elemental forces operated and in the “realm of the night” anything could happen. Fairy tales were a kind of ancient folk imagination, subverting the rational orderliness of society. Little wonder then that the Romantics, breaking away from classical sensibility, found inspiration in peasant folklore for it was like a code for exploring complex feelings, in an era before psychology give us terms to articulate them. We owe “the forest” a lot and tonight’s concert showed how powerful the symbolism still remains.

On a plain black set, a singer in white tells a story from the Brothers Grimm. Thus starts Hesketh’s Small Tales, Tall Tales. The music follows the narrative closely, just discordant enough to remind the listener that all is not what it seems. The piece flows naturally into Weir’s Really ?...and other stories. They have a natural affinity, like Ewartung and Bluebeard’s Castle. They could easily become popular staples of music theatre as they are accessible enough to appeal to a wide audience, and not too technically difficult for non-specialist performance. Hesketh’s music is inventive and filled with telling detail, such as a reference to the demented music in the murder scene in Wozzeck. Schlauraffenland, the third section, might translate as “The Land of Milk and Honey” ie. a place too good to be true. One tall tale is surpassed by the next, the delusion ending with cockcrow at dawn……..or does it ?

In Blond Eckbert, what we see as reality turns out to be total delusion, except that we don’t know where, when and how the balance shifts. The story comes from Ludwig von Tieck’s tale about a man who lives in a remote part of the Harz Mountains (heavily wooded and mysterious in those days before roads and cars). He and his wife live in isolation, independent, they think, of ties to the world. Weir originally wrote this hour long opera for large orchestra, but here the orchestration was sharply reduced to only ten players. Surprisingly, the transcription works as well as the larger version, which has been filmed and is available on CD (NMC D106). Leaving out percussion and big brass, Weir focuses on instruments that bring out a soundworld closer to early Romantic music. She doesn’t actually quote, but I kept hearing echoes of Weber, Mendelssohn, Loewe, Schumann and Brahms. It’s no accident, since Brahms also set Die schöne Magelone, undoubtedly the best known musical version of any Tieck text. This is beautiful, musically astute writing. It captures with exquisite sympathy the magical world of early German opera and Singspiele. Yet Weir’s music is unequivocally contemporary in its adventurous form and phrasing, the shifting dissonances adding wordless voices to comment on the narrative so that the ghosts in the tale seem to be in the pit as well as on stage. In his paranoia, Eckbert hears voices accusing him as “murderer”, and “criminal” and it’s brilliantly imaginative that the orchestra should add to the unsettling hysteria. The scoring for harp is exquisite and warm, and follows the voices, yet it, too, conveys an air of deceptive calm.

The chamber transcription is excellent because it works better with the mood of oppressive claustrophobia. Anyone understanding the symbolism of folktale can recognise that the dark expanse of stage that keeps Eckbert’s home squashed into a corner, is a symbol of the universal “forest”, the subconscious. The use of blinds to screen out the world from the “moderation” of his home is brilliant. It is a metaphor for repression, for keeping the unruly inner demons of the forest outside. Eckbert can pace nervously up and down, pulling at the blinds, as if dimly aware that the “temperance” that governs his life hangs by a thread – or the string of a Venetian blind.

The sense of being hemmed in is powerfully potent, for ultimately, Eckbert and Berthe cannot escape from what happened long ago in the dense woods, even if they don’t understand why. The mysterious exotic bird (sung by Claire Wild) has the freest, most soaring music, as well as being free to move about all over the stage: “ O Waldeinsamkeit!” she sings. The isolation of the woods reflects the isolation of the soul which Eckbert experiences in his mental collapse. Yet is it just Eckbert who goes stir crazy ? Is he Berthe’s brother or is that another tall story ? Or does he exist at all ? Is he a projection of Berthe’s troubled subconscious ? Berthe (Heather Shipp) may not have many lines to sing, but the whole plot hinges on her past, and her role is critical. Yet is she real, either ? That wig and 1950’s plastic stiffness may imply that she is but a projection of Eckbert’s psyche.

And then there's Walther, Eckbert’s only friend. This demanding part involves, literally, shape shifting. Has he been the mysterious old woman in the woods all along ? Is he Eckbert’s alter ego ? Is Eckbert’s realisation that he “longs to disclose” his secrets, the catalyst for all that is to come ? How does Walther become Hugo ? Owen Gilhooly’s Eckbert and Mark Wilde’s Walther are a pair. Both parts have the most innovative music, and are far more demanding than either of the female roles. I suspect too, that the more restrained orchestration has a lot to do with shifting the balances and bringing out new levels of meaning. Gilhooly and Wilde are very convincing performers, whatever it is they’re meant to “be”.

Expressing this fundamental ambiguity is Weir’s great achievement. She understands that the forest and the folktales that lurk in its depths are a symbol of the human soul. Nothing is quite what it seems. We don’t know the convoluted paths through the woods and probably never will. But as Herder, Tieck, the Brothers Grimm, Brentano and von Arnim and other Romantics intuited, you can keep the forest at bay but you can’t get ever get away from it completely. Blond Eckbert is Ewartung and Bluebeard’s Castle in one, and with a distinctive twist.

Godzilla, remembering the tsunami

It's been a year since the tsunami hit Northern Japan, followed by the emergency at Fukushima. The western news media have moved on, but for many of the Japanese involved, the trauma hasn't ended. Earlier this month, BBC2  TV ran a programme "Children of the Tsunami" (clip here). Kids are more matter of fact than adults, because they're so direct. These kids were positive and upbeat but I suspect they'd be a lot more screwed up if they didn't have good families and a supportive culture which predicates on everyone chipping in together.  One boy was so young he couldn't relate to things and became mute. It's a gradual process and full healing won't come soon. When one of the boys was asked what he'd do to reverse the disaster, he innocently said, "pick it all up and put it back in the sea where it came from". Perfectly logical if you're a kid. And presumably one who's grown up with Japanese ideas of the balance of nature.

Last year I wrote about Ishiro Honda's 1954 film Godzilla (Gojira in Japanese). Godzilla rises from the ocean and wreaks havoc on land. Everyone thinks the world is going to end. Then the scientist hears schoolchildren singing "The Prayer for Peace" and knows what he has to do. The music for the film was composed by Akira Ikufube 伊福部 昭 (1914-2006), himself a victim of radiation, but who lived to a ripe old age. Ikufube's score is evocative when you listen as music, without the film. Godziilla's main theme is poignant and beautiful, though he's a monster. When he stomps on land, and tears up electricity  pylons, the ostinato theme sounds like The Rite of Spring, only more bereft and anguished. Then, when the children sing the Prayer for Peace in a plaintive minor key, you realize it's an adaptation of the main Godzilla theme. Godzilla is much more than a monster movie, it's a parable about the power of nature, an art movie in every sense. DETAILS HERE.  Ikufube's full score is now available minus film so you can enjoy it on both levels. Also a lot of his symphonic music and non-film work. Please see lots more on Japanese film, Japanese composers and music for film on this site.

Anna Netrebko lets rip for the women of the world !

Normally I run miles from stuff like Women in the World, so pious and earnest! Real women are busy getting on with things. But this year Anna Netrebko got invited to do the "women in the arts" slot and she wowed them dead. Remember this was for people who don't listen to classical music usually, so the idea is to blast them off their feet. Which Trebs knows how to do. She's pretty down to earth, I think, and has often been spotted incognito at the Royal Opera House. Last time, she was there, for Don Giovanni, to watch Erwin Schrott undress (which she can do at home), she was sitting two seats from me. Nobody noticed, since many of the audience were first timers, which must have miffed her. At first I looked at her friend, who had a  family resemblance, and was stunningly attired. They rushed off after the first act but returned early for the second. I was meditating, as I do in spare moments, and felt a presence beside me. Looking up, straight at La Trebs, not two feet away. Beatific smile from her, genuinely friendly, though she didn't have a clue who I was. I smiled back, she smiled again. Lovely! So watch her as she shows a non-music audience what her job involves.

Meyerbeer and Heinrich Heine

Is 19th century French opera having a renaissance? Certainly seems so with so many new performances of Berlioz, Massenet and others  We're now so used to heavier Italanate singing that maybe it's a good time to hear different kinds of voices and open out the repertoire. I've been listening to Giacomo Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable.(1831). Someone once told me it's a mad mix of Don Giovanni and Faust, but I'm not so sure.  It's pretty crazy and a great vehicle for singers - soprano, high lyric tenor and low baritone. Thus most people know the opera through star arias. But once Robert Le Diable was a wild sensation to which le tout Paris flocked. The picture shows a performance in Paris in 1850, by which time the opera was a well established favourite. Wagner saw it, and Heinrich Heine, who wrote this poem. It was set by Wilhelm Killmayer and has been recorded by Christoph Prégardien. The poet is a man about town, intent on seducing a racy lady. They have an assignation in a private dining room (the 19th century equivalent of love motels - think Der Rosenkavalier, where Octavian cons Baron Ochs)

Komm morgen zwischen zwei und drei,
Dann sollen neue Flammen
Bewähren meine Schwärmerei;
Wir essen nachher zusammen.

Wenn ich Billette bekommen kann,
Bin ich sogar kapabel,
Dich in die Oper zu führen alsdann:
Man gibt Robert-le-Diable.

Es ist ein großes Zauberstück
Voll Teufelslust und Liebe;
Von Meyerbeer ist die Musik,
Der schlechte Text von Scribe.

"Come tomorrow between 2 and 3. Then shall new flames prove my passion. We'll dine together afterwards. If I can get tickets (and I'm a crafty lad). I'll take you to the opera. They're doing Robert le Diable. It's a great bit of magic, full of devilry and love. From Meyerbeer the music. Crap text by Scribe"

And here is a taster ! More soon

Walter Braunfels Jeanne D'Arc, Szenen aus dem Leben der Heiligen Johanna

Walter Braunfels's Jeanne d'Arc, Szenen aus dem Leben der Heiligen Johanna is a much underestimated work. It's eclipsed by the fame of Die Vögel, but Jeanne d'Arc is a masterpiece. Braunfels fought at the front during the First World War. The trauma completely changed his perspectives. Die Vögel is is an early stage in Braunfel's's engagement with the issues of the 20th century. Jeanne d'Arc is in many ways its culmination, politically, spritually and musically.
 
Braunfels started writing Jeanne d'Arc in 1938. He'd been proscribed by the Nazis, and made an unemployable non-person whose music could not be performed in public. Hitler was threatening war, staved off by British appeasement. By the time Braunfels completed the opera in 1943, war had broken out all over again on an even wider scale than the war he'd known. This time his sons were at the front.. The madness was happening all over again."We are like castaways on a desert island, around which the hurricane continues to rage", he wrote.

Braunfels's choice of subject was deliberate. Joan of Arc rallied the French against English invaders. This time France was invaded by Germans. Joan was a powerless girl who stood up to overwhelming forces. Throughout Europe in the 1920's, 30's  and 40's, Joan was a symbol  explored in plays, movies, and music. Braunfels's most direct inspiration was Paul Hindemith's Mathis der Maler, which he heard in Zurich in 1938. By connecting to medieval Christian Europe, Braunfels eschews both totalitarian anti-religion and the kind of nationalism that causes war.

Braunfels's libretto, which he wrote himself after reading about Joan's trial, places the context firmly in  a time of crisis. A chorus of villagers cry in panic, Hilfe, Hilfe! As Joan's father later says "An Himmel lohnt drer Brand von tausend Höfen". Johanna, however, is sitting by a tree from which a strange light is shining. Voices tell her that she has a mission. She';s so child-like that she sings a ditty, complete with tra la las. "Denn ein Kreiger, ein Kreiger, soll ich werden".

Braunfels's music is pointedly pure and simple. Single instrumental groups, often solo instruments, swathes of strings and winds suggest flowing movement not decoration for its own sake. Even in the scenes in the royal court, textures are clean, texts conversational. King and knights, portrayed as ordinary men. When Saint Michael appears, he's almost one of their own. For the faithful like Johanna, (and Braunfels), saints are as natural as normal people.

Braunfels uses a formal structure to frame the narrative, like a  medieval painting. Three main sections, Der Berufung (the summons) Der Triumph and Das Leiden, (Sufferings) unfold. Der Triumph, of course, lasts but a few minutes. It's preceded by a bizarre interlude, after the first Act. The Herzog de la Trémouille steps in front of the theatre curtain and sings a monologue. "When God created the Fool, he, the wisest of all, could be sure that scum (Abschaum) would arise from it". The Duke thinks Johanna is scum, for she leads "Die dumpfe Masse" (stupid masses) "From every hole there now crawls all who were poor, and who, deeply humiliated, long for a 1000 year Reich - troopers, roughnecks, greedy wastrels!". (Landsknechte, Raufbolde, geldsücht'ge Habenichste). Ferocious dark chords, skeletal discords, smoky woodwinds. The vocal part is set with angular extremes. "And I alone" sings the bass, "should be wrong because I don't follow deception and don't give in to urges". Perhaps Braunfels is referring to non-believers who distrust faith and miracles. But the references to the rise of the Brownshirts are so obvious that they can't be ignored.  Anyone who thinks Braunfels was a mindless, dreamy Romantic needs to hear this, and wonder what its upside down morality might mean.

The moment of Johanna's triumph at Rheims with fanfares. At last the music soars as one would expect, but this is no cinematic glory. Braunfels keeps his colours clear, the text simple. "Johanna ! Johanna!" the townsfolk cry, but there's a chill, which prepares us for the nest scene, where at dawn, Johanna is communing alone with her voices. This minor-key stillness seems the true heart of Braunfels's meditation,   We're spared the deatils of Johanna's first imprisonment. Each scene is preceded by a Vorpeil that creates mood, but the one that begins the third act expresses the passage of time. Johanna has been confessed and recanted, yet she's still in prison. Dark rhythms, blasting timpani, trumpets blasting, Johanna's voice ascending shooting up the scale, all sudden, tense moments cut off in their prime.  Distant kin of the jerky bird rhythms of Die Vögel and Die Verkündigung. The Vicar Inquisitor condemns Johanna in a mix of speech and stylized chant. The king and nobles call Johanna  a fraud : their music vaguely like medieval march. Then St Michael appears, a Lohengrin whom no-one can see.

Long, keening lines in the orchestra. We're now at the stake in the marketplace at Rouen. Joan is calm for Saint Michael has told her why she must die. Significantly, now, Braunfels gives Gilles des Rais (Bluebeard) an interesting aria. "Nien, niemals, nein, niemals, so endet das nicht"  He can't believe that the real miracle is Johanna's death, not her escape. Braunfels shows des Rais as sensitive, confused and desperate for certainty, "Gewissheit! Gewissheit! Gewissheit!". Perhaps it was that crisis of faith that drove the historic des Rais into madness and turned him into a mass murderer of innocent children? This is an aspect of the story few explore, but Braunfels does it by implication,  and shows it as.a very 20th century anguish.

The Bishop of Beauvais insists "Mein System war der richtiges!", but the part is written to show the strain on the tenor's voice. Yet again, we hear the bird rhythms of  Die Vögel , and how they function as exclamation points breaking up the vocal line. Not comfortable, soothing or Romantic at all.  In contrast, the deeper, more lugubrious timbre of the Vicar Inquisitor, who shows more sympathy with Johanna. The chorus howls like a mob and in a sudden crescendo, we can hear the flames ignite. Screams and  eerie"smoke" like cadences from the orchestra. Gilles des Rais appears again, his last aria tinged with extreme grief. He sees Johanna as Christ-like, but still can't understand what her death means "Satan, du hast geseigt". Only when the mob discovers that Johanna's heart did not burn do they realize a miracle has taken place. "Wir haben eine Heilige gebrannt" cries the Vicar Inquisitor. By then, though, it's too late.

Braunfels's Jeanne d'Arc, Szenen aus dem Leben der Heiligen Johanna is mock medieval, but like Hiundemith's Mathis der Maler, Hartmann's Simplicius Simplicissimuss, (more HERE) Orff's Carmina Burana and indeed Braunfel's  Die Verkündigung. (more HERE) the medievalism is but a disguise for utterly modern preoccupations.  There's nothing retro or escapist in these pieces. Far too much is made of the fact that fashion changed after the war, and this music didn't get performed.  After the trauma of the Second World War, people were hardly in the mood to deal with reminders of the period, especially when, up to 1989, much of central and eastern Europe was still controlled by the Soviet Union, in direct consequence of the war. Similarly, the "jazz age" and modernity of the 1920;s was a reaction against the trauma of the First World War and the forces that shaped it. As Braunfels would certainly have understood, cultures need periodic renewal..

It's nonsense to blame Schoenberg or modern music for the eclipse of composers like Braunfels. Fashions in music change all the time. No-one forced anyone to write 12 tone, it just opened up new ideas. Berg and Webern wrote in very different styles to Schoenberg.  Composers often seem to disappear after they die for no apparent reason. Schubert, for example, was obscure long after his death, revived sporadically, and the D numbers organized for the 1928 centenary. Even Bach fell out of fashion until Mendelssohn performed him and made sure he was published.

The notion that Braunfels and others were "suppressed" by modern music is as crazy as thinking you can be President if you can see Russia from your backyard. Braunfels and his peers were modern.  There are many kinds of modernity, and hearing them in the context of art, literature and the culture of their time, shows how they fit into place. So why the need to hear them as "suppressed" by modernity?
 
I don't know why only a few minutes of Braunfel's Phantastische Erscheinungen eines Themas von Hector Berlioz (read more HERE) was heard at the Proms. It was as if the composer had been posthumously castrated.  Surely those who love his work should be proud of what he achieved? But until we learn to listen to Braunfels and the composers of his time for what they really wrote, they won't get the genuine respect they deserve.

There's a very good recording of Braunfels Jeanne d'Arc, Szenen aus dem Leben der Heiligen Johanna released late last year on Decca. Juliane Banse sings Johanna (she also sang the lead in Die Verkündigung), Terje Stensvold sings Gilles des Rais, Günter Missenhardt the Herzog de la Trémouille. Manfred Honeck, who specializes in Braunfels, conducts the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Get it. Extremely good performances, and conducting. Just as it's a good idea to avoid the sloppy molasses LA Die Vögel (Conlon) in favour of the vastly more intelligent, idiomatic 1997 Decca Die Vögel (Zagrosek and a cast who really can sing those high notes) best stick to Honeck with European orchestras.
Please also see the other things I've writte about Joan of Arc in music, film and art, and lots more on Braunfels  

Booers and Boors - How I'd stage Rusalka

Recently, someone disliked a Bruckner performance so much  that he walked out.  Big fuss in the press. Yet when booers attack Dvořák's Rusalka at the Royal Opera House, the media go wild and give more mileage to the booers than to the opera itself. Ironic huh?  The man who walked out of Bruckner knows his Bruckner passionately (and is Ken Russell's son, a chip off the old block). For every genuine music lover, there are a thousand who boo for pleasure and the satisfaction they get from imposing themselves on others. Some even go intending to be offended. Booers are boors.

Analyze some of the comments about the ROH Rusalka. Many don't know the production, the opera, the music, the composer nor even the genre. But since when did reality get in the way of determined opinion? Booing is bluff, and says more about the booer than the booed. The fuss has given the ROH Rusalka a bigger buzz than it, or most operas,would normally attract. But in the long term, it's destructive because it breeds a body of opinion that's fundamentally anti-art. Instead of opening out horizons, as art should do, it creates an extra barrier. Don't rush to blame staging, because opera is theatre, and visuals are part of the impact. When we experience opera, wer're responding through several different filters. There is no such thing as "pure" non-interpretation. Even when you read a score, you're "interpreting" how it might sound. Singers, conductors and stage directors are interpreting what the opera means to them at that time. When you hear people talking, you listen for their point of view, whether you agree or not.

We all see, but we don't all see the same thing. Everyone can see, but not everyone can understand how and why visual images work.  It's a skill as important in opera as understanding the music. It's an art in itself, which should be cultivated.  Like all art, opera is oblique poetry that tells us more than literal fact.  So the more you know about the opera, the composer and his background, the better equipped you are to take on board what there might be. One of the problems withn the ROH Rusalka is that many people think in terms of Walt Disney. But fairy tales were moral parables, warning children about the dangers of transgression. Rusalka and the Prince both want something outside their own worlds,  and both are punished in gruesome ways.  It's a horrible story. You'd have to be pretty sick to think Rusalka is "pretty". Dvořák didn't.

It's essential to respect that he thought in different terms.  Listen to his music, with its sinister murmurs and ominous undercurrents, from which sudden sparks emerge, illuminating the darkness before falling back, defeated. Rusalka and the Prince are given difficult tessituras, from which the voices must nmake heroic leaps above the stave, figuratively leaping over barriers. Dvořák knows the characters are doomed. Those high notes are a way of expressing defiance. So, a dark shadowy colour scheme where the "white", silvery textures of the two main voices stand out better, and the powerful metaphor of the Moon shines out. Rusalka's buig number is the Song of the Moon, The Prince's The Aria of the White Doe. Shining, pale colours, gutsier shades for the other characters.

If I were staging Rusalka, I'd respect that Dvořák wasn't writing Disney. Dark staging, overhanging thickets, dense, morbid entanglements. I loved the projections of microscope slides of water in the ROH Rusalka because they showed that water is teeming with life. Bacteria is part of  the ecological system and supports the life of the waters Rusalki inhabit. To them, it's not ugly, but beautiful.  Those who sneer can't understand Rusalka and her world at all.  Indeed, the less realistic the better, because we have to make an effort to understand these alien values for themselves.

It's ludicrous to knock the ROH Rusalka for semi-nudity. Even in fairy tales, water spirits and mermaids are depicted semi-naked, which is part of their allure. They seduce the unwary. Again, respect Dvořák. Act One, Scene One and already Dvořák writes the beautiful but explicitly erotic aria "He comes here frequently". The Prince has been skinny dipping in Rusalka's lake. She's seen him swim naked and has been embracing him in the form of a wave.  He doesn't know because he can't see her, but she realizes it means she has female, mortal feelings. Imagine staging the Prince inn the nude! Audiences would go berserk. But it's in the libretto and fundamental to meaning. Maybe it should be done, in some way that doesn't compromise the singer who has to do it. He has enough on his mind with the vocal challenges.

Rusalka and the Prince come from incompatible worlds, so any staging has to show how different these worlds are. Rotating sets are often a good way of doing quick changes, but how to create contrast?  Nature vs Urban, wild vs "civilized"? Lots of potential.  Even a vaguely feminist take, given the composer's thing for adventurous women (pleasae see my review of The Jacobin). The ROH Rusalka bordello scene was as true to the text as David Pountney's Rusalka in a Victorian nursery, but neither really handle all aspects oif this bizarre story. Perhaps it's too much for us mortals to cope with? Abstraction would be an option, so audiences don't lock into specifics but listen for meaning. Dvořák is remarkably impartial.

He also shows how dangerous magic can be. It's a quick fix but fundamentally wrong. I liked the quirky ROH cat, but a friend said that it should have been more sinister. Some think the cat was raping Rusalka but I thought she was just grinding her down and pulling off her fish tail (skirt). But how to stage a scene like this? Dvořák's instructions are that the cat must be able to jump and pour the magic brew down Rusalka's throat by force. I did like the way the cat turned back into a real cat later and ran off, like normal cats do.

Lots of ideas - that's what opera is about. These days "popular" may be more important than "good" but I'll stick my meck out for informed opinion. How will new audiences ever learn if they're intimidated by bullying mobs, especially those who don't know what they're talking about?  Opinion isn't nearly as important as how it is formed. It matters to learn the opera, the composer and the background, but above all,  it's essential to keep an open mind and keep learning, so your opinions continue to develop. This same attitude applies to other things, like politics. Please see a review of the ROH Rusalka here and a review of the ROH Zambello Don Giovanni, which is one of the worst cases of anti-composer travesty. Now THAT was Regietrash. But alas, "popular", perhaps with the same audiences who think the ROH  Rusalka isn't true to Dvořák.

Bartoli Rossini Otello Zürich streaming

This is MAJOR as you'll read in the review below. Rossini's Otello, Ossia il Moro di Venezia live from Opernhaus Zürich, available in full Thursday on Medici TV. Once Rossini's Otello was a huge hit, starring Maria di Malibran for example, but for the last 100 years it's been eclipsed by Verdi (and of course Shakespeare). Cecilia Bartoli is a role she relishes! Sounds like a fabulous production. James Sohre in Opera Today (FULL review here)  "Zurich's Magnificent Other Moor" says
"Right to the musical ‘score’ board: Zurich Opera stared down the mighty challenge posed by Rossini’s Otello ossia il moro di Venezia, and knocked it out of the ballpark.The reasons for this unqualified success are many, beginning with superb casting that no house could better".. 

Anna Prohaska - Wigmore Hall

Anna Prohaska gave a good debut recital tonight at the Wigmore Hall, even though she clearly wasn't well, and had cancelled a concert in Berlin earlier this week. "But this the Wigmore Hall!" she said. "The Temple of art song!". Besides, she added, friends and family had travelled to London from all over Europe to support her. "They'd assassinate me if I cancelled", she added.

All singers get sick, many risk their voices to carry on regardless. but few are so candid and charming about it. Anyone can sing, but only the really great can communicate this eloquently even before singing a note. Prohaska has star quality because she can captivate an audience and involve them in what she's doing. The mark, I think, of  someone born for the stage. As we already know from hearing her vivacious Zerlina at La Scala lasr year (read about that here)

Few singers would dare essay Prohaska's ambitious programme for the Wigmore Hall. A daring range of styles. Debussy, Fauré, Wolf, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Schubert, Haydn, Mahler, John Dowland and Henry Lawes, Arthur Honegger, Karol Szymanowski and, to cap it all Dvořák's Song of the Moon from Rusalka. Because she wasn't well, you could hear the strain, but Prohaska's professionalism won through. She can pace herself for the fiendishly difficult rhythms in two of Szymanowski's Songs of a Fairy Princess, (read here), with their exotic ululations, while resting (somewhat) in the gentler Dowland and Lawes.This programme would tax the finest and the most experienced, so it's to Prohaska's credit that she tried it at all. Eric Schneider, Matthias Goerne's regular partner, supported her well.

But the programme wasn't just a vehicle for Prohaska's talents. It served an important artistic purpose. Its title was "Song of the Sirens", songs about water spirits and seductresses associated with water and the sea. (read more about what I've written on the subject HERE and other posts on Schubert and Wolf). It's quite an achievement on its own terms - whoever devised this programme knows their repertoire well.  By no means all obvious or popular songs, but a treasure for repertoire buffs like me. Prohaska should keep this programme for the future because it's exceptionally rewarding and would make an unmissable debut CD. EXTRA ! I guessed right. She already has made a CD of these songs for Deutsche Grammophon. Must get !
Photo: Monika Rittershaus, Askonas Holt.

You can hear whole concerts on the Berliner Philharmoniker site where Anna Prohaska sings with Claudio Abbado conducting the Berliner Philharmoniker. But I thought, instead, honour where she gets some of her genes from, her grandfather Felix Prohaska. Below, he's conducting Alfred Poell and the Vienna Staatsoper Orchestra  in Mahler in 1950. This is one of the landmark performances, which everyone interested in Mahler song needs to know, still one of the best despite 60 years of competition.

The secret history of Louie, Louie

If you were old enough or young enough in the 1960's you could not have escaped Louie, Louie. It was wilder and more radical than the Beatles or Rolling Stones. Downright dirty! The slurred vocals and beefy, aggressive guitar licks suggested something so horribly indecent that it could not be articulated. In those innocent days when girls wore white socks and cardies, it was like an explosion of primitive Id. The song was immediately banned in Singapore and other polite places.

 The original song was penned by Richard Berry in 1955, and was an innocuous semi-calyposo about a lonely sailor. It wasn't a hit, but Berry tourede the Pacific North West, then a fairly conservative place where people did things like logging, farming and fishing.  Then a band of local whitebread kids covered it and the song went ballistic. The Kingsmen were wholesome, suburban from middle class homes, their band supported by their parents. But their version of Louie Louie was anarchy,  a sudden, volcanic explosion of primal Id.  Now the region is the Heimatland of Grunge (Kurt Cobain, etc).  Go figure?

While Berry pronoundced the name Louie, Louie like it was Louis XIV, the Kingsmen growled Loo-EI Loo-EI Oh Bebbeh!  like a cannibal chant pounded out with imaginary spears. Because the words were unintelligible, you could read anything into them, but the mood was unmistakable.  That driving beat that let nothing get in its way. "Me gotta go, oooh no! yeah, yeah!!"  "They can't speak English!" said my Dad. Mick Jagger seemed so tame. Being the hippest, coolest kid in the entire region, it was inevitable that I should be drawn into Louie Louie although I was a nerdy A student already absorbed in Schubert. No regrets, for Louie, Louie opened out dark territory for a sheltered kid like me, but in a safe way. And it did enhance my love for Schubert who intuits wild shores, though he does it more elegantly. At that age I was listening to Galli-curci and to bel canto. Later still, Varèse was a breeze and The Rite of Spring perfectly easy to access.  Louie, Louie has been covered many times (a fairly weak British version by the Kinks) but the Kingsmen were the most original and the best.

How to do Oberon Britten Midsummer Night's Dream

Strange comments this week about GMSD's Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream at the Barbican on the role of Oberon. Surely those who write about music would know that Britten wrote the part for countertenor? If he had wanted to write the part for tenor he would have, particularly as he had one in house. But he deliberately wrote it for countertenor. Think why.

Oberon is the King of the Fairies and appears at night, after the "witching hour", when sleep releases the unconscious and dreams. Throughout the music, nocturnal sounds, creating shadowy images and magic. So Britten wants Oberon to sound ethereal, way above the normal register, floating like moonlight. Hence countertenor, the perfect voice for otherworldly mystery. Moreover, Oberon is not a nice person. He wants Puck for unspecified (possibly unsavoury) reasons and is prepared to do Tytania harm to get the boy away from her. What he does to his spouse amounts to abuse, even though it's "magic". So Oberon has to sound weird, cool and slightly sinister - it's what the role's about. That's exactly what Tom Verney did at the GSMD performance of A Midsummers Night's Dream. and good for him. READ FULL REVIEW HERE. The secret of judging and creating performance is knowing what the music does. This applies to all things, including  Rusalka, about which I'll write more soon.

Below is a clip from a version of MSND at the Liceu in Barcelona. It looks as if it was created by someone who really understands the music and the magic in the opera. Look at the image of the moon, representing nocturnal forces, dominating the dark set. The counter tenor is David Daniels - this is one of the great roles in the repertoire. How coolly and weirdly he sings!  The roccoco oscillations are part of the supernatural magic.  But words that count thus come out sharply cut and undecorated.  Despite the high register, he's masculine and physical, for Oberon is powerful and gets his way. But the last thing you want in the voice is butch and basso.  You're supposed to be unsettled by who Oberon really is. In the Liceu production, Oberon's hair and beard are green, for he's a nature spirit, like the Green Man.The director is Robert Carsen, who did the La Scala Don Giovanni and the Glyndebourne Rinaldo (both reviewed on this site, use search box)  On the basis of this short clip, I've ordered the DVD. Anyone interested in stagecraft and in Britten might want to do the same.

Alice Herz Sommer - life is a gift

"Hatred eats the soul of the hater, not that of the hater" - Alice Herz Sommer, who will be 109 in November. She survived Theresienstadt as one of the camp musicians, so she knows extreme suffering more than most. Yet she's positive and takes each day as "a gift". And she gives back to the world.  Alice is positive therapy. "Music is God", she has said, in difficult times you feel it most". Think of the famous quandary, is a glass half full or half empty? But some will think, "completely full" as the other half is air, without which we cannot live. Drink it gratefully!  Some people, alas, get their kicks out of being miserable and inflicting it on everyone else. Not Alice!

There is a new book about Alice in the pipeline,  I've only seen the promo video. So enjoy this 2010 interview above,  read the first biography "A Garden of Eden in Hell" and watch the 2004 video below

Mambo Girl

Dazzling harlequin optical effects! The Mambo Girl dances for her friends the hottest, hippest kids in town  Later they hang out on campus (my old Alma Mater) and sing happy songs accompanied by harmonica quartet.This movie was made in 1957, soon after Bill Haley and the Comets launched Rock n Roll on the world and invented the Teenager. What's more, The Mambo Girl is a female role model, very different from Hollywood stereotypes of the time. She isn't even a stereotype of Chinese actresses, many of whom seemed to commit suicide and have sad lives.  This actress, Grace Chan Ge Lan 葛蘭 is healthy, assertive and living aged 80 in California.

The Mambo Girl  is so vivacious she lights up the lives of all around her.. She's talented, beautiful, adored and has a luxurious home and a blissfully happy family. What more could a girl want?

Papa Li (Liu En-Ja 劉恩甲) is an aimable toy shop owner who indulges the teenage crowd, though other people don't approve. There's going to be a big party for The Mambo Girl's birthday but something goes wrong. It turns out that she was adopted and she's not "true born" like her younger sister. Although there was a lot of adoption in Chinese society, often it was fairly open. But the Mambo Girl (Li Kia-ling) was found in an orphanage and had no idea. She's traumatized. "Mum and Dad can't sing or dance", she thinks, "Who did I get my skills from?".

So she runs away from her sheltered home and goes to look for her genetic mother. Crying and alone on a rooftop over the city, she has a vision of her mother appearing in the sky, singing of comfort and love. The orphanage gives her a name, Yu So-ying, who used to be a dancer. So Kai-ling  goes to seedy nightclubs to track the person down. She watches an exotic dancer called Margo the Z Bomb, a tough looking white woman who's more contortionist than dancer. It's a horrible image of sexuality and degradation. Kai-ling thinks, Gosh, no, that can't be.

A foki (waiter) in the nightclub suggests she speak to the toilet attendant. It's a lowly job, the woman has clearly had a hard life and had seen better times. She sees how wholesome and pampered Kai-ling is, so she tells her firmly  that she's not her mother. Kai-ling is bereft and doesn't know what to do. But her friends play her a recording of her singing on a huge reel to reel tape machine. (!). She then ng realizes that it is her art that will give her life meaning, not her parentage, and that she owes it to society to bring happiness to others.  So she returns to the Li family home, where the party starts again. Kai-ling dances and sings, she's in her element once more as the Mambo Girl, whoever her parents may be. Outside, we see the foki and the toilet attendant looking on, and walking away. Are they her birth patents ? No matter, they love her too much to change her new life.

This is a fabulous film for the dancing, singing and acting. Glorious! Lots of famous stars like Papa Li (Liu En-ja in one of his finest roles). Mona Fong (the toilet attendeant), before she became a producer and movie mogul at Shaw Brothers Studios and partner of Run Run Shaw (still alive aged 105). Peter Chen Ho (as boyfriend)  at the start of his career.

But it's also interesting in terms of Chinese filial values. Family is fundamental to Chinese sense of self. But Kai-ling's mother loves her so much that she'd rather the girl be happy with the Li family and have a future. For me this movie is heartbreaking. In the 1950's, after decades of war, there were millions of traumatized people. Every character in this film is a displaced person, away from their birthplace.  Even genial Papa Li and his wife were refugees, Mandarin speaking exiles in Cantonese Hong Kong. They'd struck lucky. Many ohers struggled,  like Yu So-ying, the toilet attendant. Thousands of kids in orphanages, until they, too, went out into the world.  Mambo Girl is available on DVD and online (if you search under Chinese title (曼波女郎). It's in Mandarin, with English and Chinese sub titles.

GSMD Britten Midsummer Night's Dream Barbican

High hopes for the Guildhall School of Music and Drama's  Benjamin Britten A Midummer Night's Dream. Instead of the usual cramped GSMD theatre, this took place in the Barbican Theatre, which allows much more scope for ambitious work, and training in theatre skills, part of the GSMD brief. At the Barbican, young artists of the future have a bigger platform in every way.

A magical effect to begin with. The mechanical curtain was imaginatively clothed in sparkling metal strips. Then, the set revealed a dormitory, perhaps some spartan public school whose fees don't cover humane accomodation for the inmates.  Fair enough, for Britten was traumatized at boarding school, and his music retraces lost innocence over and over again. Then in come the lovers, Demetrius, Lysander, Hermia and Helena, who appear in 1940's military garb. Later, Bottom awakes in a bed suspended above the stage. If these images seem familiar, they're derived. like collage, from several recent professional productions including the ENO, Garsington Opera and Glyndebourne. That's not in itself  a problem, since GSMD students are there to learn.

Perhaps this production was a collaborative effort, involving as many students as possible in the process, but Director Martin Lloyd-Evans might have exerted tighter editorial control to ensure a coherent vision.  There are many levels in Shakespeare and in Britten, so A Midsummer Night's Dream provides wonderful opportunities for young directors and designers to engage with many ideas. This time, though, everyone seemed to be playing safe. The designs (Dick Bird) don't suggest that much thought has been put into the production. GSMD students are capable of very good work indeed. Read about their Poulenc Dialogues des Carmélites last year here. That was outstanding, and would have done credit to a professional house.
 
When the energy of the cast is engaged, however, there are excellent moments. The mechanicals, in particular, moved precisely, as if in a chorus line, each man perfectly synchronised, arms askew. (Movement by Victoria Newlyn). Very impressive, but individual personalities are not well defined. Not even Bottom, whom Shakespeare singles out for special treatment. It's a wonderful role, which Barnaby Rea sang well, but wasn't called upon to develop theatrically. The lovers were well done, Ashley Riches's distinctive voice instantly recognizable, even in anonymous uniform. We need good countertenors and Tom Verney's Oberon had imposing presence. He's very young so could well develop an interesting profile. (Read more HERE about why Britten used the voice type and why this performance worked). Good singing from the choruses, particularly the fairy quartet, vivacous and well blocked.  Given the high calibre of GSMD's Technical Theatre course participants, one might have expected more imaginative special effects to create the magic the staging lacked. At the Linbury Theatre a few years ago, Puck was played by a circus artist, abseiling from wires, as if he could fly.

Nonetheless, best for last. Shakespeare and Britten wrote the Mechanical's stage play with such wit that it's impossible not to make it effective theatre. Now each singer  made his mark, each evidently enjoying himself camping up and having fun.  Theseus, Hippolyta and the lovers sneer, but Shakespeare and Britten knew that amateur dramatics have quaint charm.

This production runs to 6th March. For more details see the GSMD website. More detail and a full cast list here  in Opera Today.

Musically superb Dvořák Rusalka Royal Opera House

Fairy tales aren't meant to be "pretty". From the first bars of the overture, Dvořák's music for Rusalka, now at the Royal Opera House, creates the opera as a powerful, disturbing drama. Rusalka belongs to the murky depths. She forsakes her world for love, but love, for her kind, brings death. Yannick Nézet-Séguin shapes the ominous shadows in this music, so when sudden leaps up the scale burst forth, they're like sudden flashes of lightning. When they subside the gloom seems all the more tragic. When the overture advances to mock heroic grandeur, suggesting the world of the Prince, we already know there will be no happy ending.

Dvořák writes similar extremes into the vocal parts. Rusalka and the Prince inhabit a tessitura so high that tension is built into their very lines. From this, ferociously high notes explode. The high C's tear upwards as if they're trying to leap free of their background. They're too beautiful to be screams, but they're a kind of call, through which the protagonists are trying to reach out for something beyond their grasp. Narrative, embedded in music. Words are secondary. Don't follow the text, even if you don't speak Czech. Follow the way the music shapes meaning.

Camilla Nylund and Brian Hymel, singing Rusalka and the Prnice, are absoutely stunning. Technically, these roles are demanding, requiring unusual range and vocal agility. Nylund and Hymel don't compromise by shading downwards, so we hear the full intensity of extreme timbre as it cuts and carries. We listen in awe as their voices soar up and down the scale, for the range is a source of wonder. We're not dealing with the "real" world here, but a hyper-intense world of magic. Nylund and Hymel are "acting" with their voices because Dvořák gives them so much, and they give in return. We've had good singing at the Royal Opera House this year, but Nylund and Hymel lift things to another, if stranger, level, for that is the nature of this opera. Nylund has long been a specialist in unusual repertoire and Hymel has made his name as the Prince. ("It's a role that's been good to me" - please see this interview wth him). In this performance, Nylund and Hymel show that they are forces to be reckoned with.

Nylund and Hymel are not helped by the fidgety direction (Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito, revival director Samantha Seymour). To their credit, the directors have been faithful to the score as the movements faithfully follow the constant movement in the music, but it's hard on the principal singers whose primary duty is to the music. Nontheless, there are very good moments,  like Nylund moving stiffly like a doll when she's in the castle,"out of her depth" so to speak. Sheathed in impossible stilettos, she can only take painful steps. In this scene, she can't sing, so the direction expresses her pain extremely accurately.

The problem is far less with secondary roles like The Vodnik (Alan Held) and Ježibaba (Agnes Zweirko). Held gets to crawl about, but then that's the Goblin's nature. When he leaps onto the water fountain in the castle, you feel  his desperation and relief. Zweirko's jerky nervousness fits Ježibaba's music perfectly. Even the comic cat Mourek (Claire Talbot) and dancers at the ball fit the surreal quirkiness of the magic in the plot. They inject folksy whimsy, true to Dvořák's idiom.

Other parts of the staging are more obscure. Perhaps the designs (Barbara Ehnes) are meant to poke fun at nouveau riche ideas of 19th century opulence, and the idea of bordello hints at a rusalka's sexual nature, but they don't work. The set is best when it's simply lit  by projections. The downside is that the set provokes incomprehension because there's too much to take in.  Lazy thinkers won't get past the modern costumes, especially if they don't actually know the opera (which is usually the case) so it's wiser to give them less to be confused about. Frankly, there are far worse productions around, which deliberately sabotage both music and meaning.  The non-directed Met Götterdämmerung for example, Francesca Zambello's atrociously illiterate Don Giovanni. This production isn't good but could be a lot worse.

I hope this Rusalka will be broadcast, as freed of the staging, it's a musical landmark. Dvořák has written the drama into the score, and here the singers are doing what's needed to bring it alive. This was also one of the Royal Opera House's finest moments. Unlike concert orchestras, opera house orchestras don't get much variety of repertoire, but when they're playing for a conductor like Nézet-Séguin, they're transformed.    
photo: Bryan Hymel and Camilla Nylund, as The Prince and Rusalka, copoyright Clive Barda, February 2012

Lots more on Dvořák on this site and on stagecreft and singing.

Rusalka ROH Bryan Hymel

Antonin Dvořák's Rusalka opens tonight at the Royal Opera House. It's the first full staging, though the opera was performed in concert form a few years ago.  Great cast - Camilla Nylund, Alan Held and Bryan Hymel and the long awaited ROH debut of Yannick Nézet-Séguin. (For my review see here).

Hymel first sang The Foreign Prince at the Wexford Opera Festival, and now it's become one of his signature roles. He's a high lyric tenor, like Piotr Beczala who sang the part in the original Salzburg production. Voice type makes a difference, musically, even though the fashion these days is for Italianate and heavier voices. Dvořák wrote the part for a bright, agile voice type, so it "shines" as the Foreign Prince might have appeared shining to Rusalka, who was used to the darkness of her nocturnal lake.

The Foreign Prince isn't really a Romantic hero because he treats Rusalka badly. That's what happens to women who have nothing to say!  On the other hand, he's youthful like Rusalka seems to be, and like her learns wisdom through tough experience. Read what Hymel says about singing the part HERE in an interview with Opera Today.


It seems strange now that Rusalka was once relatively obscure (hence Wexford) though ENO did a staging 27 years ago. That was the one where the Rusalki were shown as children in a sterile Victorian nursery which is fine for the sexual repression in the story but is only part of what the opera is about. Fashions change in opera, and in voice types and in singing styles, just as speech changes over time. Listen to tapes of people talking in the 1920's or even 1950's.  So it's healthy that there's a shift towards astute performances of repertoire. Hymel mentions a renaissance in French repertoire and French aesthetics. It's already under way, with the plethora of Massenet and Berlioz we're hearing these days. A whole new terrain !
Lots more on Dvořák and other Czech composers on this site - please explore.